Making a Holy Week: Fulfillment of Prophecy

May I pray with you real quick?

Let's pray.

By the God, I thank you so much for the opportunity

to be here today.

Thank you so much for these young kids.

Lord, it truly is a testimony of what it meant

when you said that we should have faith like a child.

To see them be able to get up in front of

a hundred and something people,

to dance and play and have fun,

to not be overcome with fear,

to not be overcome with what other people think about us,

to not be overcome with feeling like we are inadequate

to do something.

Lord, they can teach us so many things

about how we're supposed to serve you.

Father, I thank you for every single child and family

that's here today.

I pray that you would bless them.

Lord, I thank you for the opportunity

to be here to worship you

and to see this really fun thing we got to experience.

Father, we pray for all of our people

who aren't able to be here.

Lord, our shut-ins and people who are struggling

with health issues.

And Lord, I just wanna pray specifically

for Evan Simon this morning.

He used to attend here a long time ago when he was a kid.

And Father, I just pray that you'd be with him

as he's waiting a kidney transplant

and having some serious health issues as young men.

God, touch him today, touch his body,

but most importantly, touch his spirit.

And Father, I pray that you'd be with us

in these few moments.

Help us to see clearly, help us to have open hearts,

open ears, open eyes, and open minds,

to receive your word and to receive truth

and to live our lives on it.

Lord, we love you and we thank you

and we ask all this in Jesus' name,

all God's people said, Amen.

Amen.

Well, if you feel led, interrupt me at any time.

But we have been talking about

what went into making a Holy Week.

The week leading up to Easter

is always referred to as Holy Week.

And there's a lot of planning, a lot of preparation,

a lot of things that went into that

that spans the entire existence of the earth,

the entire existence of all creation.

So we talked the first week about Jesus coming in the flesh.

We talked the second week about Jesus being perfect

and the importance of that,

to qualify him to be the sacrifice for our sins

that our kids spoke about today,

but also to qualify him as being that high priest

that we so desperately need in our lives

to sit at God's right hand and plead on our behalf.

And so his perfection qualifies him for that.

Today, we're talking about the fulfillment of prophecy.

To understand this morning that there were over,

somewhere around an estimated of around 400 prophecies

of Jesus Christ who come, the Messiah who would come

and for Jesus to qualify to be the Messiah,

every single one of those prophecies had to be fulfilled.

I wanna read to you a passage of scripture from Isaiah,

Isaiah 53 · chapter mention

chapter 53.

And we're just gonna read verses one through 12.

Okay.

It'll be on the screen.

It says, who has believed our message?

To whom has the Lord revealed his powerful arm?

My servant grew up in the Lord's presence

like a tender green shoot, like a root in dry ground.

There was nothing beautiful or majestic

about his appearance, nothing to attract us to him.

He was despised and rejected, a man of sorrows

acquainted with deepest grief.

We turned our backs on him and we looked the other way.

He was despised and we did not care.

Yet it was our weaknesses he carried.

It was our sorrows that weighed him down.

And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God,

a punishment for his own sins.

But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins.

He was beaten so we could be made whole.

He was whipped so we could be healed.

All of us like sheep have strayed away.

We have left God's paths to follow our own,

yet the Lord laid on him the sins of us all.

He was oppressed and treated harshly,

yet he never said a word.

He was led like a limb to the slaughter

and as a sheep is silent before the shears,

he did not open his mouth.

Unjustly condemned, he was led away.

No one cared that he died without descendants,

that his life was cut short and midstream,

but he was struck down for the rebellion of my people.

He had done no wrong and had never deceived anyone,

but he was buried like a criminal.

He was put in a rich man's grave.

But it was the Lord's good plan to crush him

and cause him grief.

Yet when his life is made an offering for sin,

he will have many descendants.

He will enjoy a long life

and the Lord's good plan will prosper in his hands.

When he sees all that is accomplished by his anguish,

he will be satisfied.

And because of his experience,

my righteous servant will make it possible

for many to be counted righteous,

for he will bear all their sins.

I will give him the honors of a victorious soldier

because he exposed himself to death.

He was counted among the rebels.

He bore the sins of many and interceded for rebels.

And as we read this passage,

this very familiar chapter from Isaiah,

this is one of the most powerful,

one of the most compact passages that we have

with a ton of prophecies about who Christ would be

and what he would experience

and what he would accomplish

in that sacrifice that he gave for our sins.

And so point number one this morning,

I wanna bring to you.

As God was making a holy week,

as Jesus suffered and died

and was getting ready and preparing himself for this,

number one is, is I must believe.

I want you to say that with me this morning.

Say, I must believe.

Verse one, ask this question.

Who has believed?

To whom has the Lord revealed?

And there's this kind of twofold thing that happens here.

Okay, there has to be an attitude in our hearts

to believe in God.

And if you had this attitude in your life

that I'm not gonna believe in him,

like I'm not gonna do this.

Like I'm here today, I watched the kid,

I watched my grandson or grandchild,

I watched my niece or my nephew,

I watched my own kid,

but this ain't for me, I'm not believing.

There is nothing in this world that I can say

or anyone else in the world can say to you

to convince you to believe.

It just can't happen.

I'm not eloquent or powerful enough

to persuade you in any possible way.

But there has to be an attitude of the heart

within people to say, Lord,

I don't believe, number one, to acknowledge,

like, okay, either I believe or I don't believe.

To come to this point where we say, Lord, I don't believe,

but I'm willing to believe if this is real.

To ask that question and say, God, if this is real,

if you're real, if heaven's real, if all this is real,

I'm willing to believe,

but Lord, I need you to help me believe.

Like, if you're real, I wanna believe,

but I'm not there yet,

but Lord, I need you to help me believe.

And I believe with all my heart

that if you're willing to say that one thing,

I really believe God will help you.

And I believe that he will reveal himself to you.

Because the second part of verse one is,

to whom has the Lord revealed his powerful arm.

And I honestly believe with all my heart

that anybody in here today who's willing to say,

Lord, I don't believe,

but I'm willing if you will show yourself to me

that he will reveal himself to you.

He will reveal his power, his might, his majesty.

He will make himself known.

And I could talk about all the different things

to prove to you the existence of Christ

and prove to you that he died on the cross

and how it's historically accurate

and all of these prophecies

and all these things that he fulfilled,

but nothing I can say will convince you otherwise

if you don't want to believe.

But that's the condition of your heart.

It's a condition of what you are willing to do

in your own life.

And we've got to come to this point in our life

where we say, God, I'm willing.

I don't believe, I don't buy into it.

I've never seen it lived out.

I've never known a good Christian.

There's been a lot of hypocrites.

I've seen a lot of bad stuff from other people

who've claimed to be Christians

and it's turned me off, but Lord, if it's real,

I'm willing to have the attitude,

say, God, reveal yourself to me.

And I believe that he will.

Point two, that as we believe to understand this morning

that he carried my weakness and my sin.

So say that with me today, my weakness, my sin.

And that's what Isaiah says,

that he carried my weakness, he carried my sin.

And part of what we believe as Christians

is that he died because we messed up.

He died because we couldn't do it ourselves.

He didn't just die for some stranger

across on the other side of the world,

but he died for you and he died for me.

It's a very personal thing.

And it doesn't mean this morning

that you're a terrible person because of that.

We're gonna play a game, you ready?

Everybody gonna participate?

Raise your hand if you've ever in your life

put something before God.

Look at all the hands, just look around, okay?

There's one.

Raise your hand if you've ever had a good luck charm

or prioritize a physical object in your life.

I'm a baseball player.

It took many years to overcome the stigma of superstitions,

okay, that you grow up with in that.

Number three, how many of you

have ever taken the Lord's name in vain?

Not as many people as want to raise your hand.

Number four, how many of you have failed to rest

on the Sabbath?

Number five, how many of you have not honored your parents

at some point in your life?

Number six, how many of you have ever hated someone?

We're all guilty of murder.

Number seven, this is gonna get a little uncomfortable.

How many of you have ever lusted?

I'll raise my hand to that.

Number eight, or nine, sorry.

How many of you ever took something without asking?

Stolen something.

Number 10, how many of you ever wanted something

that somebody else had?

We're all guilty.

And from the biggest things that you can imagine

to the littlest things,

like every single one of us deserves sin

or deserve hell and condemnation.

But as people, as people in general, we're the worst.

You know, if you think about it like,

nobody will hurt you more than the people

who should love you the most, right?

They're the ones who hurt you the most

because you give them so much access,

but we're sinful people and we mess up.

And Jesus had to cover our weakness.

He had to cover our sin in order to redeem us.

Point number three, it's all God's plan.

It's all God's plan.

And at some point in your life,

you have to realize and take this attitude in your life,

no matter what you've been through,

no matter what you've experienced,

no matter how far back it was, no matter how recent it was,

that everything that you've gone through in life,

everything that you're going through right now,

it is all part of God's glorious plan.

And it may not be enjoyable.

It may not be easy to deal with.

It may be very frustrating in a moment,

but God can take anything and use it for good.

It's all part of his plan.

And you go back to verse 10 in our focus passage of Isaiah 53.

And the first part of verse 10 said,

it was the Lord's good plan to crush him

and cause him grief.

So many people wonder like, if God is so good,

why would he allow bad things to happen?

And you sit back and say, well, every single one of us

have sinned enough in our life

to deserve bad to be brought on our life,

because I guarantee you, I know I myself personally

have caused bad on other people.

I've caused sorrow and grief and pain and frustrations

in other people's lives.

I've put that on other people.

And so I most certainly deserve it in my own life.

But when you look back at the whole passage of Isaiah 53,

it's talking about Jesus being perfect.

He never sinned.

They led him away like a lamb to the slaughter.

They beat him, they broke him.

He was whipped and bruised for our transgressions

so that we could be healed.

He never said a word.

And it was God's good plan to crush him

and cause him grief.

And I know that more than likely,

every single person in this room has experienced

something very difficult in your life at some point in time

if you're not going through something very difficult

right now in this moment.

And there may be the question,

God, why is this happening to me?

And it takes a lot of faith to step back and say,

Lord, I don't know why,

and I sure don't wanna do this,

and I sure don't wanna experience this

and have to work through this in my life.

But I believe that somehow, some way,

this is good and you're gonna do good in this.

Because Jesus, who was the only person

who didn't deserve it, he was crushed.

He was physically and spiritually crushed.

And it was God's good plan to do that.

And I watched a video here recently.

I don't know if you are familiar with Wesley Huff.

He's a young man who is probably one of the

most influential biblical scholars right now.

Very solid dude.

I haven't seen anything that I disagree with

in any strong way or form.

But in one of his videos, he said

that hell is the only fair place.

Think about that today.

If you say you believe in Jesus Christ,

if you say you believe in God,

you believe in eternity, hell is the only fair place.

Hell is the only place where every person who goes there

gets exactly what they deserve.

And the truth is, is we all deserve it.

Every single one of us could go to hell

and we absolutely, 100% deserve to be there.

If I go to hell today, I deserve to be there.

I admit that.

If it was not for Jesus, that's where I belong.

It's the only place that everything is fair.

People say all the time, that's not fair.

This should be fair.

Why is this not fair?

The only thing on earth,

the only thing in existence that's fair is hell,

where we all get what we deserve.

The most unfair place that exists is heaven.

And I think we said last week,

heaven's gonna be full with people

who know they don't deserve to be there.

Heaven's the place where people go

who don't deserve to be there.

And so God doesn't play the fair game.

God plays the just game.

God is not making it fair because you're a good person

because what we said a while ago

and we all raised our hands at some point in time,

you should have raised your hand.

If not, there's a bigger issue there

if you didn't raise your hand

when we started calling out those 10 sins.

But we all deserve to be there.

But Jesus paid that price.

It was God's good plan for him to suffer and die

so that you and I could receive something

that we don't deserve and not get what we do deserve.

Greatest plan of all.

So thankful for that.

And so the struggles and the trials

and the tribulations that we face in this life,

they may be hard, they may be heavy,

but we can rejoice in the fact

that no matter whether or not they turn out the way

that we want them to,

that because they're earthly, they're temporary.

And no matter what, one day they'll end.

But because of Jesus, we get to go to heaven

where there's not gonna be any of that anymore.

And we get to look forward to the opportunity

to be in perfection that no matter if our troubles

never leave us in this life,

if those struggles never leave us in this life,

we have an eternal home that we can go to

and we know it's all gonna be gone

and it's all gonna be good because God had a better plan

than we could ever have.

Point four, last one.

Jesus is satisfied and rewarded.

I think that's something that we miss a lot of times.

We focus so much on this holy week

and what Jesus went through.

A lot of times I can remember as a young person,

even when I first got saved during Easter,

I would focus a lot on Good Friday.

Like whenever I was thinking of Easter,

I was thinking of Jesus getting beaten

and dying on the cross.

And it was all about the physical punishment,

the death, the suffering that he went through

that I focused on.

But Jesus, once he has completed his sacrifice,

once he's completed this good plan

that God has called him to,

he fulfills all these prophecies

that God's called him to fulfill,

he is satisfied and rewarded for everything that he's done.

And I think that's one of the things

we have to remember as believers this morning.

That as we follow Jesus Christ,

many times people think that as soon as you give your heart

to Christ, life is just automatically gonna get better.

That things are just supposed to fall in place

and it's dominoes and everything just works out perfectly.

And that's not necessarily true.

There's a lot of consequences,

there's a lot of baggage that we bring along

into our relationship with Christ.

There's a lot of things in this world

you're surrounded by people who aren't saved.

You may have family members,

you may have a spouse who's not saved

and you're gonna deal with all that

even in your walk with Christ.

But it's in the end that we are rewarded and satisfied.

Jesus, if you remember, we talked about this Wednesday night

in our adult Bible study, we're in Mark 14.

Jesus said, Lord, everything's possible with you.

Anything's possible.

And if it's possible, please let this cup pass from me.

Jesus didn't wanna do it.

I think we missed that a lot of times.

He prayed that God would take it from him

and not make him do this.

And he finished up his prayer,

yet not my will, but your will be done.

And I think sometimes as believers,

we have to remind ourselves today

that we're not following Jesus Christ

for what this life has to offer.

Yes, there are benefits, there are rewards,

there are blessings from following the Lord.

I believe that, I've seen it firsthand

in other people's lives and in my own life.

My life is so much better following Jesus

than what it was before I followed Jesus.

But the true reward and the true satisfaction

is gonna come when we cross the threshold

from this life into eternity.

Jesus bled and died, he suffered,

not because he wanted to, but because God called him to

and it was God's plan.

And he was willing to do it because it was God's will

and you and I needed it and he loved us that much.

And his reward is every person who calls on his name

will be saved and they will be children of God

and they will be his.

He never had a child on earth.

He never had a family, but he'll have an enormous family

when we all get to heaven and we'll all be his.

And we'll all be covered by his blood

and his grace and his mercy, not because we deserved it,

but because he was willing to do what was unfair

so that we could have a hope of eternal life with him.

The question you gotta ask yourself is

what do I believe today?

Am I willing to believe in Jesus

and allow him to reveal himself to me?

You know, scripture says that on the day of judgment,

every knee will bow and every tongue will confess it.

Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

Right now you've got a choice.

You can choose whether or not you're gonna open up your heart

and your mind to allow Jesus to speak to you and believe

or if you're gonna remain hardened and shut that out.

But make no mistake about it,

one day you will confess Jesus Christ is Lord,

but on the day that you're forced to do it,

it'll be too late, but you will do it.

You gotta ask yourself this morning,

am I gonna do it willingly

or am I gonna be forced to do it later on down the road?

And I hope and pray that you'll do it willingly.

If I told you this morning there was a million dollar check

and one of them eggs out there is hidden,

how many of you would run to go find it?

I'd be running to go find it.

I'd knock every one of you down to go find it.

But if you believe that we're true,

there would be something within you

that would change in order to receive

what waits ahead of you for the possibility to receive that.

And that's competing with the 100,

how many other people are here this morning?

But there's only one.

Every single one of you have the opportunity

to receive Christ, to receive eternal life,

something that's worth so much more than a million dollars

in your house.

What are you running to?

What are you believing in?

What's your feet moving towards

that shows what you truly believe in and trust in?

That's the question we have to ask ourselves this morning.

Let's pray.

Father God, thank you so much for your word,

your love, and your mercy.

Thank you for your good plan.

And Lord, I have to personally confess

and repent because many times in my life,

I've questioned you when bad things have happened,

things that I didn't understand,

where it's frustrated me and I've questioned you.

But Lord, it was your good plan

to crush your one and only son and bring him grief for us.

And we rejoice at that.

Every single one of us are here this morning.

And we get to smile and be happy and wear nice clothes

and watch kids put on a play and go eat hamburgers

and hot dogs and have this great day

because it was your good plan

that your son would suffer and die for us.

Help us not to lose sight of what's important

in the midst of this physical life.

But Lord, to remind ourselves when life is happening,

to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus,

the one who took the punishment for our sins,

the one who took the fairness away

because we all deserve hell.

But Lord, you graciously and mercifully

give us eternal life and we thank you for that.

Help us this morning to believe in you, to trust in you.

And I pray that we wouldn't just say it with our mouths,

but Lord, that we would put some feet to our words

and live it out like we actually do.

Lord, we love you today and thank you.

We ask this in Jesus' name

and pray that you bless the food down there

to the nourishment of our body.

Help us to have a good time and be safe

and honor you in all we do.

For it's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.